“Jang Jaehi?”
“She must have been a regular employee there.”
Trying to recall if such a name existed at that store, he couldn’t remember.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t nice enough to memorize the names of all my coworkers.”
“She was a surfer. Light brown skin with long hair, notably flashy blonde.”
Though the specific description seemed like it might help identify the person…
“About half the surfers had that style back then.”
It was natural for people who frequently went to the beach to get tanned, and at that time, vibrant hair colors that could be distinguished from afar were trendy among surfers. In fact, there were so many eye-catching hair colors on the waves that people said it looked like a rainbow had fallen on the ocean.
When Junghyun pointed out that such a description wouldn’t be much help, Jaehyuk clicked his tongue as if recalling a memory.
“Come to think of it, it was trendy back then.”
“It was a trend that came and went like a tsunami.”
After bleaching and dyeing their hair, repeatedly exposing it to the blazing sun and high-salt seawater, people experienced severe bleaching that progressed to the point of scalp inflammation, making it truly a trend that swept through and vanished in an instant.
Those who experienced their hair breaking off in chunks never carelessly tampered with their hair again.
“But why are you suddenly asking about that person?”
“I was curious about how the incident was handled.”
“What incident?”
“I saw some Alphas secretly drugging that person’s drink at a bar when they were away from their seat. When I told them about it, they beat the culprits thoroughly—so thoroughly that the culprits fled, preventing an on-site arrest. I was wondering how the investigation proceeded after that.”
Startled by a story that sounded very familiar, Junghyun turned to look at him.
Could it be?
Could he possibly remember that incident?
Well, it was such an unusual event that he might remember it… but who was Jang Jaehi?
While feeling bewildered about how things were connecting in this person’s mind, a memory from that time flashed through his head.
Come to think of it, back then, he had been suddenly brought in to work part-time during a holiday period and hadn’t had time to get a new name tag. So he had used the name tag of an employee who had just quit.
He couldn’t remember what name was engraved on the name tag he wore then, but if that name tag had “Jang Jaehi” on it, Jaehyuk might have remembered the name just from seeing the tag.
That made sense.
At that time, he had just started surfing, so he frequently went to the sea and got quite tanned. Since high school graduation, he hadn’t cut his hair and had grown it quite long.
Plus, he had bleached it too.
That’s right. That’s how it was.
Yongwoo’s sister had started learning cosmetology and needed hair dyeing models, so she forced all their friends to serve as models, dyeing their hair in various colors…
And he had drawn platinum blonde in the lottery.
Thanks to that, he had lived with a rather flashy style that summer.
So flashy that people would turn to look wherever he went.
Then around winter, his uncle, who said he couldn’t stand the sight of him anymore, had dragged him to dye his hair black again and cut it. The reason was that he had left the roots undyed out of laziness, and the black hair had grown out too much, making it look terrible.
After that, he disliked messing with it so much that he always kept his hair short and black.
He had realized that someone as lazy as him should never dye their hair.
So it made sense that Jaehyuk hadn’t recognized him.
Because they met again a year later.
However, though Jaehyuk couldn’t recognize him because his appearance had changed so dramatically, he remembered Junghyun quite in detail.
That made him feel strange.
It seemed to make him happy.
“It probably wasn’t handled properly. There are so many incidents like that around here that even when reports are filed, the police just file a report and leave it at that.”
“As I expected.”
“It’s predictable. But why are you still concerned about something from so long ago?”
“Just because. It was funny seeing that person beat the culprits with paddles until the paddles broke, and also because their face was my type.”
“…Their face?”
“Though their style was excessively flashy, their face was definitely my type. That’s why it particularly stuck in my memory. I was also worried because they seemed like a typical Omega.”
At that moment, Junghyun was certain.
This person undoubtedly had face blindness.
As he laughed helplessly at the absurd situation, Jaehyuk, who had just opened the door to the living room, stopped in his tracks and muttered quietly.
“Come to think of it…”
Pausing there, he stood by the open door, looking down at Junghyun.
His heart skipped a beat under that intense gaze.
Wondering if Jaehyuk could hear his heart pounding loudly, Junghyun stared at him, barely able to breathe properly, as Jaehyuk gazed at him with gentle eyes and whispered.
“…Maybe they resembled you?”
His heart beat even louder at Jaehyuk’s sweet voice and gaze, which seemed almost seductive.
As Junghyun stared at Jaehyuk’s eyes, entranced by the loud throbbing of his own heart, Jaehyuk gestured with his head as if telling him to go in first.
Hurriedly turning his gaze away from that polite yet affectionate gesture, Junghyun tried to walk as casually as possible toward the sofa in the reception room.
But his heart was still racing.
Loud and tumultuous.
Feeling heat rush to his face, he turned his attention to his phone, afraid Jaehyuk might notice.
Pretending to be calm, he checked the notifications on his phone… and sure enough, an enormous number of messages had arrived.
But strangely, none of the messages registered in his mind.
Though he was pretending otherwise, all his attention was focused on Jaehyuk.
“Come to think of it, there is a resemblance. But that person seemed more fragile than you. Shorter too. If you grew your hair out, you might look similar…”
Of course they would look similar. They were the same person.
But deliberately pretending not to know, he asked in a nonchalant tone.
“You seem to like long hair.”
“I’ve always liked long-haired breeds. I enjoy trimming them.”
Junghyun’s hand paused for a moment at this intimate confession of his preference.
With that one statement, everything started to make sense.
Though Jaehyuk enjoyed bathing him, the madness that gleamed in his eyes when washing and drying his hair suggested he particularly enjoyed touching hair.
To be precise, “fur.”
Suddenly, he felt very strange.
“In your eyes, do I really look like a chihuahua?”
Feeling uncomfortable, Junghyun was about to bend his waist to sit on the sofa when he felt a creaking pain in his waist and buttocks. Giving up on sitting properly, he half-reclined against the sofa’s armrest.
Watching this from the side, Jaehyuk sat elegantly across from him, leaning against the backrest, and retorted.
“It’s irritating if I think of you as a person, but if I think of you as a dog, at least you’re cute.”
“You like dogs a lot?”
“I do.”
“If you like them that much, why not keep some? There are many abandoned dogs, and someone like you could keep dozens.”
“That’s on hold. It’s too painful when they leave.”
Come to think of it, he had heard something about that.
That Jaehyuk’s password was the birthday of a dog he had kept when he was young.
Using a dog’s birthday as a password meant he must have had a great affection for it.
Even if it was something like an obsession or compulsion.
Just like how Junghyun still used the address of the house where he lived with his mother as his password.
For Jaehyuk, that dog was the same.
A single special existence he could never forget, and his greatest trauma.
Suddenly, Junghyun’s hand halted.
For some reason, his heart suddenly grew cold.
His mind sank into coldness too.
The thought occurred to him: what am I doing to this person?
“Then, it would be better if you didn’t see me as a dog from now on.”
“Why?”
“We’ll part ways soon anyway, and it’ll be painful when we say goodbye.”
“It’s not like you’re dying.”
“Not being able to see each other again is the same thing.”
“Whether we’ll see each other again or not in this small country of Korea is something we’ll only know when the time comes.”
Jaehyuk was right.
In this small country of Korea, especially in the even smaller Alpha-Omega community, it would be impossible to live without running into each other.
Moreover, given that their paths had crossed like this and their hobbies overlapped, they would inevitably meet somewhere.
But that applied to normal couples.
Jaehyuk and he were not like that.
A year later, after divorcing Jaehyuk, Junghyun planned to cleanly disappear from his sight as promised.
As if he had never existed.
He intended to completely vanish from Jaehyuk’s life, never to cross paths again.
He thought that was the right thing to do.
After all, lies are always bound to be exposed eventually.
Someday, without fail…
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
